1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method useful in imaging software development, and in particular, it relates to a method of using digital image comparison in imaging software development.
2. Description of Related Art
When developing new software for imaging-relating devices, such as imaging software (e.g. raster image processor or RIP) for a printer, the output of the imaging software needs to be verified for image quality and accuracy. Conventionally, this process involves actually printing many (hundreds to thousands) of pages of images using the imaging software under development, and manually comparing these printed pages either to previously printed images (using existing reference software) or to original documents viewed on screen via software applications (e.g. Microsoft® Word, Adobe® Acrobat®, etc.). This process may need to be repeated many times during the development of a new device or software, or during the process of bug fixing or releasing updated (improved) software for an existing product.
This process can be very expensive in terms of human resources (time), equipment (often the printing device is also in development and either not available or is hand made and therefore very expensive), consumables (paper, toner).